


A Burning Thing

by spinninginfinityboy



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Angelic Lore, Angst, Crowley Was Raphael Before He Fell (Good Omens), Established Relationship, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Halo Kink, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, No Smut, Praise Kink
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-23
Updated: 2019-06-23
Packaged: 2020-05-18 11:46:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,336
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19333897
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spinninginfinityboy/pseuds/spinninginfinityboy
Summary: "Do you want me to open the blinds?”“Heaven, no. People might think it an invitation to enter. Let me just-“With a moment’s careful focus a soft light forms in the air and begins slowly to strengthen. Crowley’s jaw drops.“Angel, are- are you-?”The silver light is soft and warm, reminiscent of moonlight on a summer’s night. It has no physical source; it simply exists, loosely ringing Aziraphale’s head and fluctuating in intensity whenever he needs it to. Crowley swallows hard.“I’m- I just- Th- I’ve never seen it. Your, uh. Yeah. Before.”He gestures, a little futilely, to Aziraphale’s newly visible halo. Aziraphale flushes gently.“I don’t exactly go around showing it off."





	A Burning Thing

There’s a bookshop in Soho where the discerning customer can buy many things. Mostly, and naturally, they can buy books - dog-eared Stephen King paperbacks and flat-earth fantasies, dubious and pseudoscientific textbooks, and then further in an unedited 1890 edition of The Picture of Dorian Gray* , a first edition collection of books of prophecy – but not only books, not at all. There are bottles of mysterious liquid that could well have once been wine, and arcane navigational instruments. There is a shelf of scrolls in a language no human has ever read. There are at least seventeen spiders who have a formal and mutually beneficial arrangement with the proprietor. On one particularly hard-to-reach shelf, there’s a demon.

The demon isn’t available for purchase** but he can nonetheless be found lounging on the high oak shelves and broad support beams with far more consistency than the majority of the rare volumes the shop claims to stock for public purchase. He certainly spends more time there than any customer would ever dare.

On this particular day, he’s bored. He’s exhausted all of the fun to be had from hanging upside down like a vampire, and all of the fun to be had from turning himself into a bat and scaring away straggling customers. For a while he chooses to entertain himself watching the shop’s proprietor lovingly restore a rather battered volume of Les Miserables. Something about watching him draw a knifeblade carefully down each edge, clever and practiced hands restoring the most damaged of bindings, is soothing to the demon. Hell is a cluttered and vile place. The meticulous cleaning and tidying is a nice change of pace. But soon enough he grows bored of that, too, and begins a new game of strategically lounging on different surfaces every few minutes, inching his way ever closer.

“Crowley,” says the angel at the antique desk, after the demon moves to lean against the shelf just barely within his field of vision. “Don’t think I don’t know what you’re doing.”

“No idea what you’re talking about, angel,” he replies easily, words tripping almost too smoothly off the tongue. It might be convincing, were it not for the fact he moves closer to the desk as he speaks. His hips sway with the rhythm of a body which hasn’t quite forgotten it used to be a serpent, and when he reaches the high-backed chair where the angel sits he leans and curls around it, loose-limbed and comfortable. It’s been a long time since the Apocalypse failed to happen, and since then he has gotten gradually much more comfortable with the practice of showing affection to the angel. After all, when you’ve loved someone since slightly before the invention of love, spending time with them becomes as easy as breathing*** .

“Aziraphale,” he says after a while, as though the thought has just occurred to him and hasn’t been rattling around his head for several hours, “I’m bored.”

“I would never have guessed, dear,” says Aziraphale in response. His tone is gentle and brimming with affection, though he remains intent on his work. “But I am busy. We can talk afterwards.”

Crowley lets out a long-suffering sigh which ruffles Aziraphale’s blond curls, and presses a kiss to his temple, content for now to simply continue to watch Aziraphale’s work. It’s methodical in a way nothing else in the bookshop is. After a few moments calmly observing, the corners of Crowley’s mouth twitch into a frown.

“How can you see this? Do you want me to open the blinds?”

“Heaven, no. People might think it an invitation to enter.”

“But it’s dark.”

Tutting under his breath, Aziraphale swats him lightly away and closes his eyes.

“Let me just-“ he mutters, and then with a moment’s careful focus a soft light forms in the air and begins slowly to strengthen. Crowley’s jaw drops.

“Angel, are- are you-?”

“Well there’s no need to be quite so uptight about it. Nobody can see me, and I need a little extra light.”

With eyes shining with awe, Crowley watches. The silver light is soft and warm, reminiscent of moonlight on a summer’s night. It has no physical source; it simply exists, loosely ringing Aziraphale’s head and fluctuating in intensity whenever he needs it to. It’s beautiful. Crowley swallows hard.

“I’m- I just- Th- I’ve never seen it. Your, uh. Yeah. Before.”

He gestures, a little futilely, to Aziraphale’s newly visible halo. Aziraphale flushes gently.

“I don’t exactly go around showing it off. Supposed to be blending in, you know.”

Crowley doesn’t seem to be quite listening. With a soft noise which seems to escape, unbidden, from the back of his throat, he moves around the chair to kiss Aziraphale. Both hands come up to cup Aziraphale’s cheeks, soft and ever reverent, no matter how many times he is afforded the privilege. Aziraphale’s hands come entirely away from the book as he returns the kiss. So many, now, that they surely cannot be under observation from their respective Head Offices, but never enough to make up for the past six millennia. When they pull apart, Aziraphale’s silver-grey eyes are warm and shining.

“My dear Crowley” he sighs softly, and pulls him close without a moment’s thought remaining for the book. Crowley buries his hands in Aziraphale’s hair, eagerly pressing closer. He reaches a careful hand up to stroke through the golden curls, humming in pure bliss when his hand brushes through Aziraphale’s halo. It’s warm and though it has no solid form, he can easily make out the shape of it; a ring, flattened and sparkling slightly to the touch. Despite the reverence with which he touches, Aziraphale shivers, a full-body movement which Crowley recognizes all too well. It’s remarkably similar to the way he shivers at his most unguarded and intimate, a state which Crowley is extremely pleased to say he has seen more than a handful of times.

“Oh…” he breathes, opening his eyes and looking at Crowley. The yellow gaze which has always held him so steadily in his sights is there to meet him. All at once a thought strikes him.

“Oh, my dear,” he says, reaching out to run his fingertips gently down the side of Crowley’s jaw. “I wish I could have seen yours.”

“Trust me, angel, you don’t want to.”

The words are too sharp on Crowley’s tongue, too hurriedly spat out. His heartbeat**** is hammering hard enough he fears, wildly, that Aziraphale might hear it. In the split second he had taken to process Aziraphale’s words, it had seemed like a good enough explanation, but once the sentence leaves his mouth he instantly realizes his mistake. Aziraphale had assumed he simply didn’t have a halo any more, assumed that demons lost theirs entirely in their Fall. Most did. As Aziraphale’s eyes widen in response to the revelation, Crowley bites his tongue hard.

Shit.

“You mean- Crowley, are you telling me you still have it?”

“Not- I, uh- it- not as such, no.”

The words barely come out around a mouthful of incoherent sounds and garbled stuttering. His hands begin to shake in tandem to his voice. When Aziraphale lifts his hands to hold Crowley’s, grounding and steadying him, it’s all Crowley can do to force down a sob. It’s been a long time since he’d last let himself think about his halo. It’s been all of time since anyone had seen it.

“I would never presume to… to impose, or demand from you anything you are uncomfortable with,” Aziraphale says, his tone reminiscent of one soothing a nervous animal. “But my dear Crowley, if you wouldn’t mind… I would be honoured to share this with you.”

How can something so kind feel so cruel? Crowley feels a pain so deep it’s almost physical. It must show in his face because Aziraphale crumples slightly, an apology already starting to form on his lips. With a wordless gesture, Crowley shushes him.

“It’s… it’s not right. Not how it should be, not any more.”

What Crowley can’t say, for fear of the words choking him entirely, is that an angel’s halo is something incredibly intimate, thought by some to be a way of expressing their soul. Showing his to Aziraphale risks revealing his twisted, damaged soul. Risks making himself truly unlovable.

“Are you sure?” he asks, forcing himself to take a few deep breaths, to steady himself. The soft grip on his hands tightens briefly, Aziraphale giving a gentle squeeze.

“My love, when it comes to you I am sure I adore every part of you.” He pauses and chuckles. “Well, perhaps not your dreadful music taste.”

Crowley laughs softly.

“I still can’t believe you ever called the Velvet Underground ‘bebop’.” 

“Well is it any fault of mine that ‘avant-garde proto-punk experimental art rock’ is such a mouthful?”

Seeing the expression on Crowley’s face, Aziraphale smirks.

“No need to look so surprised. I do read, you know.”

“Don’t watch,” Crowley says, and Aziraphale has known him long enough to know exactly which thought he is continuing. With a final reassuring squeeze of his hand, Aziraphale politely turns his back.

It itches. Crowley concentrates hard and he knows it should be easier but manifesting it since… since then has always been difficult. It feels like trying to fit something once perfect but now bent into a space it no longer fits. An apt analogy, really. He screws his eyes shut and tries again, and though it takes much more effort than it used to, once he feels he halo begin to manifest he feels an accompanying wave of relief. It’s like sinking into a warm bath after a cold day; he didn’t realise how uncomfortable he had been until he relaxed. It doesn’t sit quite so well as it used to but it’s a pleasant warmth, a comfortable feeling of being grounded. He opens his eyes and coughs.

“Aziraphale? You can turn round.”

The angel doesn’t even pretend to show caution. He always has struggled with delaying his indulgences. Aziraphale whirls round and drinks in the sight with such awe Crowley almost wants to run and hide. There are some times he truly understands why angels so often greet humans with an entreaty not to be afraid. A being of love can be truly terrible to behold. Aziraphale’s silver eyes are wide and eager, and slowly beginning to fill with tears.

“Oh my…” he breathes. “May I?”

He reaches a tentative hand towards Crowley, who flinches. Immediately Aziraphale withdraws his hand.

“I’m sorry, love,” he says softly. “I won’t touch.”

“Burns,” mumbles Crowley. The word seems to fill the room with something heavy.

“Tell me what it looks like?” asks Crowley, a long moment of silence later. “I don’t – well, it’s not exactly easy to see the top of your own head.”

It’s true; he hasn’t seen it for millennia. He’s touched it, occasionally, trying to re-learn its new curves and angles, the changes yet the familiarity too. It gives him a queasy feeling in the pit of his stomach. Aziraphale takes a breath, smiling as he looks for the words.

“It’s radiant. Crimson, a beautiful crimson, or perhaps closer to fire; a deep red with some orange notes, too. It’s stunning. Fitting, really. It is almost as beautiful as you are.”

Warmth stirs in Crowley’s chest, unnecessary heartbeat stuttering at the compliment. The warm, campfire glow emanating from his halo helpfully disguises the way his ears redden. Aziraphale carries on, moving slightly closer to him in order to examine his halo in more detail.

“Oh, but it isn’t so simple as that, oh no. Hairline black patterns all over it, crisscrossing every which way. Almost like a coal fire, emanating warmth. It really is something special to behold.”

Aziraphale leans back a little, raises his hand to gesture to his own halo, sketch out a small area on the front of it.

“This part here, at the front, is not the same as mine. Mine forms a circle. Yours is more of a crescent shape, curving round and slightly upwards at either side. I suppose that might be where the myth of demons and horns originated. It looks so noble on you.”

There is such love in Aziraphale’s voice that for a wild moment Crowley thinks this must be blasphemous. The angel presses a reverent kiss to Crowley’s hand before he concludes the description.

“I have never seen its equal, my dear. In fact, I’ve only seen a halo this colour once before. Raphael, the archangel, had fire in his hair and halo too.”

“Yeah, well,” says Crowley, coughing. “Two percent of the population and all that.”

“And only one of you.”

Crowley knows that he will lie awake and overthink that sentence countless future nights, but for now, he hasn’t got a spare thought for anything other than his angel. Aziraphale stands, gently tugging Crowley with him until they stand chest to chest. The glow of their halos mingles, illuminating them both with a soft light. Aziraphale stands on his toes to press a soft kiss to Crowley’s forehead. His hands never stray higher than his shoulders, mindful of what Crowley had said about touches burning.

“Radiant,” he repeats. Crowley shivers.

“It’s late.” Crowley is trying to hold his gaze, but his eyes are half shut and he can’t seem to help leaning into Aziraphale’s touch. For a reason he can’t quite articulate, he’s exhausted. The room is too large, the noise of the street too loud. Crowley wants pillows, wants Aziraphale, wants to be overwhelmed by soft touches and most of all, he wants to stop shaking. “Come to bed, angel.”

“You’ll have to turn out the light,” replies Aziraphale, gesturing to the glow emanating from them both. Crowley smiles, kisses him slow and deep. He lets his forked tongue flicker over Aziraphale’s lower lip and smirks at the appreciative sigh he receives in response.

“Come to bed,” he says again. “And maybe I can illuminate a few other things for you too.”

**Author's Note:**

> * Signed in flowing script with “My dear, I will stop writing about you when you condescend to age a day”.  
> ** “You can’t afford me, darling,” he had drawled at the one man brave enough to make the joke to his face. The customer had scuttled away feeling a little hotter than he would normally associate with a mere blush.  
> *** Though, interestingly, a lot more naturally. Contrary to popular belief, demons are perfectly used to the concept of love. The concept of consciously running all of those body parts humans take for granted, however, is a difficult and exhausting one. Most demons prefer to forego the practice unless it is absolutely necessary.  
> **** Also unnecessary, but Crowley has always preferred to have a reminder he is no longer cold blooded.


End file.
